CHAPTER XIV
THE NIGHT WATCH
The next morning Elijah Stone appeared in Katherine’s office as per request. He was a thickly, if not solidly, built gentleman, in imminent danger of a double chin, and with that submerged blackness of the complexion which is the result of a fresh-shaven heavy beard. He kept his jaw clinched to give an appearance of power, and his black eyebrows lowered to diffuse a sense of deeply pondered mystery. His wife considered him a rarely handsome specimen of his sex, and he permitted art to supplement the acknowledged gifts of nature so far as to perfume his glossy black hair, to wear a couple of large diamond rings, and to carry upon the watch chain that clanked heavily across the broad and arching acreage of his waistcoat a begemmed lodge emblem in size a trifle smaller than a paper weight.
He was an affable, if somewhat superior, being, and he listened to Katherine with a still further lowering of his impressive brows. She informed him, in a perplexed, helpless, womanly way, that she was inclined to believe that her father was “the victim of foul play” – the black brows sank yet another degree – and that she wished him privately to investigate the matter. He of course would know far, far better what to do than she, but she would suggest that he keep an eye upon Blake. At first Mr. Stone appeared somewhat sceptical and hesitant, but after peering darkly out for a long and ruminative period at the dusty foliage of the Court House elms, and after hearing the comfortable fee Katherine was willing to pay, he consented to accept the case. As he left he kindly assured her, with manly pity for her woman’s helplessness, that if there was anything in her suspicion she “needn’t waste no sleep now about gettin’ the goods.”
In the days that followed, Katherine saw her Monsieur Lecoque shadowing the movements of Blake with the lightness and general unobtrusiveness of a mahogany bedstead ambling about upon its castors. She soon guessed that Blake perceived that he was being watched, and she imagined how he must be smiling up his sleeve at her simplicity. Had the matters at stake not been so grave, had she been more certain of the issue, she might have put her own sleeve to a similar purpose.
In the meantime, as far as she could do so without exciting suspicion, she kept close watch upon Blake. It had occurred to her that there was a chance that he had an unknown accomplice whose discovery would make the gaining of the rest of the evidence a simple matter. There was a chance that he might let slip some revealing action. At any rate, till Mr. Manning came, her rôle was to watch with unsleeping eye for developments. Her office window commanded the entrance to Blake’s suite of rooms, and no one went up by day whom she did not see. Her bedroom commanded Blake’s house and grounds, and every night she sat at her darkened window till the small hours and watched for possible suspicious visitors, or possible suspicious movements on the part of Blake.
Also she did not forget Doctor Sherman. On the day of her departure for New York, she had called upon Doctor Sherman, and in the privacy of his study had charged him with playing a guilty part in Blake’s conspiracy. She had been urged to this course by the slender chance that, when directly accused as she had dared not accuse him in the court-room, he might break down and confess. But Doctor Sherman had denied her charge and had clung to the story he had told upon the witness stand. Since Katherine had counted but little on this chance, she had gone away but little disappointed.
But she did not now let up upon the young minister. Regular attendance at church had of late years not been one of Katherine’s virtues, but after her return it was remarked that she did not miss a single service at which Doctor Sherman spoke. She always tried to sit in the very centre of his vision, seeking to keep ever before his mind, while he preached God’s word, the sin he had committed against God’s law and man’s. He visibly grew more pale, more thin, more distraught. The changes inspired his congregation with concern; they began to talk of overwork, of the danger of a breakdown; and seeing the dire possibility of losing so popular and pew-filling a pastor, they began to urge upon him the need of a long vacation.
Katherine could not but also give attention to the campaign, since it was daily growing more sensational, and was completely engrossing the town. Blake, in his speeches, stood for a continuance of the rule that had made Westville so prosperous, and dwelt especially upon an improvement in the service of the water-works, though as to the nature of the improvements he confined himself to language that was somewhat vague. Katherine heard him often. He was always eloquent, clever, forceful, with a manly grace of presence upon the platform – just what she, and just what the town, expected him to be.
But the surprise of the campaign, to Katherine and to Westville, was Arnold Bruce. Katherine had known Bruce to be a man of energy; now, in her mind, a forceful if not altogether elegant phrase of Carlyle attached itself to him – “A steam-engine in pants.” He was never clever, never polished, he never charmed with the physical grace of his opponent, but he spoke with a power, an earnestness, and an energy that were tremendous. By the main strength of his ideas and his personality he seemed to bear down the prejudice against the principle for which he stood. He seemed to stand out in the mid-current of hostile opinion and by main strength hurl it back into its former course. The man’s efforts were nothing less than herculean. He was a bigger man, a more powerful man, than Westville had ever dreamed; and his spirited battle against such apparently hopeless odds had a compelling fascination. Despite her defiantly critical attitude, Katherine was profoundly impressed; and she heard it whispered about that, notwithstanding Blake’s great popularity, his party’s certainty of success was becoming very much disturbed.
Both Katherine and Bruce were fond of horseback riding – Doctor West’s single luxury, his saddle horse, was ever at Katherine’s disposal – and at the end of one afternoon they met by chance out along the winding River Road, with its border of bowing willows and mottled sycamores, between whose browned foliage could be glimpsed long reaches of the broad and polished river, steel-gray in the shadows, a flaming copper where the low sun poured over it its parting fire. Little by little Bruce began to talk of his ideals. Presently he was speaking with a simplicity and openness that he had not yet used with Katherine. She perceived, more clearly than before, that whereas he was dogmatic in his ideas and brutally direct in their expression, he was a hot-souled idealist, overflowing with a passionate, even desperate, love of democracy, which he feared was in danger of dying out in the land – quietly and painlessly suffocated by a narrowing oligarchy which sought to blind the people to its rule by allowing them the exercise of democracy’s dead forms.
His square, rude face, which she watched with a rising fascination, was no longer repellent. It had that compelling beauty, superior to mere tint and moulding of the flesh, which is born of great and glowing ideas. She saw that there was sweetness in his nature, that beneath his rough exterior was a violent, all-inclusive tenderness.
Now and then she put in a word of discriminating approval, now and then a word of well-reasoned dissent.
“I believe you are even more radical than I am!” he exclaimed, looking at her keenly.
“A woman, if she is really radical, has got to be more radical than a man. She sees all the evils and dangers that he sees, and in addition she suffers from injustices and restrictions from which man is wholly free.”
He was too absorbed in the afterglow of what he had been saying to take in all the meanings implicated in her last phrase.
“Do you know,” he said, as they neared the town, “you are the first woman I have met in Westville to whom one could talk about real things and who could talk back with real sense.”
A very sly and pat remark upon his inconsistency was at her tongue’s tip. But she realized that he had spoken impulsively, unguardedly, and she felt that it would be little short of sacrilege to be even gently sarcastic after the exalted revelation he had made of himself.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, and turned her face and smiled at the now steel-blue reaches of the river.
He dropped in several evenings to see her. When he was in an idealistic mood she was warmly responsive. When he was arbitrary and opinionated, she met him with chaffing and raillery, and at such times she was as elusive, as baffling, as exasperating as a sprite. On occasions when he rather insistently asked her plans and her progress in her father’s case, she evaded him and held him at bay. She felt that he admired her, but with a grudging, unwilling admiration that left his fundamental disapproval of her quite unshaken.
The more she saw of this dogmatic dreamer, this erratic man of action, the more she liked him, the more she found really admirable in him. But mixed with her admiration was an alert and pugnacious fear, so big was he, so powerful, so violently hostile to all the principles involved in her belief that the whole wide world of action should in justice lie as much open to woman to choose from as to man.
Without cessation Katherine kept eyes and mind on Blake. She searched out and pondered over the thousand possible details and ramifications his conspiracy might have. No human plan was a perfect plan. By patiently watching and studying every point there was a chance that she might discover one detail, one slip, one oversight, that would give her the key to the case.
One of the thousand possibilities was that he had an active partner in his scheme. Since no such partner was visible in the open, it was likely that his associate was a man with whom Blake wished to have seemingly no relations. Were this conjecture true, then naturally he would meet this confederate in secret. She began to think upon all possible means and places of holding secret conferences. Such a meeting might be held there in Westville in the dead of night. It might be held in any large city in which individuals might lose themselves – Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Chicago. It might be held at any appointed spot within the radius of an automobile journey.
Katherine analyzed every possible place of this last possibility. She began to watch, as she watched other possibilities, the comings and goings of the Blake automobile. It occurred to her that, if anything were in this conjecture, the meeting would be held at night; and then, a little later, it occurred to her to make a certain regular observation. The Blake garage and the West stable stood side by side and opened into the same alley. Every evening while Blake’s car was being cleaned – if it had been in use during the day – Katherine went out to say good night to her saddle horse, and as she was on friendly terms with Blake’s man she contrived, while exchanging a word with him, to read the mileage record of the speedometer. This observation she carried on with no higher hope of anything resulting from it than from any of a score of other measures. It was merely one detail of her all-embracing vigilance.
Every night she sat on watch – the evening’s earlier half usually in the rustic summer-house in the backyard, the latter part at her bedroom window. One night after most of Westville was in bed, her long, patient vigil was rewarded by seeing the Blake automobile slip out with a single vague figure at the wheel and turn into the back streets of the town.
Hours passed, and still she sat wide-eyed at her window. It was not till raucous old muzzains of roosters raised from the watch-towers of their various coops their concatenated prophecy of the dawn, that she saw the machine return with its single passenger. The next morning, as soon as she saw Blake’s man stirring about his work, she slipped out to her stable. Watching her chance, she got a glimpse of Blake’s speedometer. Then she quickly slipped back to her room and sat there in excited thought.
The evening before the mileage had read 1437; this morning the reading was 1459. Blake, in his furtive midnight journey, had travelled twenty-two miles. If he had slipped forth to meet a secret ally, then evidently their place of meeting was half of twenty-two miles distant. Where was this rendezvous?
Almost instantly she thought of The Sycamores. That fitted the requirements exactly. It was eleven miles distant – Blake had a cabin there – the place was deserted at this season of the year. Nothing could be safer than for two men, coming in different vehicles, from different points perhaps, to meet at that retired spot at such an eyeless hour.
Perhaps there was no confederate. Perhaps Blake’s night trip was not to a secret conference. Perhaps The Sycamores was not the rendezvous. But there was a chance that all three of these conjectures were correct. And if so, there was a chance, – aye, more, a probability – that there would be further midnight trysts.
Bruce had fallen into the habit of dropping in occasionally for a few minutes at the end of an evening’s speaking to tell Katherine how matters seemed to be progressing. When he called that night toward ten he was surprised to be directed around to the summer-house. His surprise was all the more because the three months’ drought had that afternoon been broken, and the rain was now driving down in gusts and there was a far rumbling of thunder that threatened a nearer and a fiercer cannonading.
Crouching beneath his umbrella, he made his way through the blackness to the summer-house, in which he saw sitting a dim, solitary figure.
“In mercy’s name, what are you doing out here?” he demanded as he entered.
“Watching the rain. I love to be out in a storm.” Every clap of thunder sent a shiver through her.
“You must go right into the house!” he commanded. “You’ll get wet. I’ll bet you’re soaked already!”
“Oh, no. I have a raincoat on,” she answered calmly. “I’m going to stay and watch the storm a little longer.”
He expostulated, spoke movingly of colds and pneumonia. But she kept her seat and sweetly suggested that he avoid his vividly pictured dangers of a premature death by following his own advice. He jerked a rustic chair up beside her, growled a bit in faint imitation of the thunder, then ran off into the wonted subject of the campaign.
As the situation now stood he had a chance of winning, so successful had been his fight to turn back public opinion; and if only he had and could use the evidence Katherine was seeking, an overwhelming victory would be his beyond a doubt. He plainly was chafing at her delays, and as plainly made it evident that he was sceptical of her gaining proof. But she did not let herself be ruffled. She evaded all his questions, and when she spoke she spoke calmly and with good-nature.
Presently, sounding dimly through a lull in the rising tumult of the night, they heard the Court House clock strike eleven. Soon after, Katherine’s ear, alert for a certain sound, caught a muffled throbbing that was not distinguishable to Bruce from the other noises of the storm.
She sprang up.
“You must go now – good night!” she said breathlessly, and darted out of the summer-house.
“Wait! Where are you going?” he cried, and tried to seize her, but she was gone.
He stumbled amazedly after her vague figure, which was running through the grape-arbour swiftly toward the stable. The blackness, his unfamiliarity with the way, made him half a minute behind Katherine in entering the barn.
“Miss West!” he called. “Miss West!”
There was no answer and no sound within the stable. Just then a flash of lightning showed him that the rear door was open. As he felt his way through this he heard Katherine say, “Whoa, Nelly! Whoa, Nelly!” and saw her swing into the saddle.
He sprang forward and caught the bridle rein.
“What are you going to do?” he cried.
“Going out for a little gallop,” she answered with an excited laugh.
“What?” A light broke in upon him. “You’ve been sitting there all evening in your riding habit! Your horse has been standing saddled and bridled in the stall! Tell me – where are you going?”
“For a little ride, I said. Now let loose my rein.”
“Why – why – ” he gasped in amazement. Then he cried out fiercely: “You shall not go! It’s madness to go out in a storm like this!”
“Mr. Bruce, let go that rein this instant!” she said peremptorily.
“I shall do nothing of the sort! I shall not let you make an insane fool of yourself!”
She bent downward. Though in the darkness he could not see her face, the tensity of her tone told him her eyes were flashing.
“Mr. Bruce,” she said with slow emphasis, “if you do not loosen that rein, this second, I give you my word I shall never see you, never speak to you again.”
“All right, but I shall not let you make a fool of yourself,” he cried with fierce dominance. “You’ve got to yield to sense, even though I use force on you.”
She did not answer. Swiftly she reversed her riding crop and with all her strength brought its heavy end down upon his wrist.
“Nelly!” she ordered sharply, and in the same instant struck the horse. The animal lunged free from Bruce’s benumbed grasp, and sprang forward into a gallop.
“Good night!” she called back to him.
He shouted a reply; his voice came to her faintly, wrathful and defiant, but his words were whirled away upon the storm.
CHAPTER XV
POLITICS MAKE STRANGE BED-FELLOWS
She quieted Nelly into a canter, made her way through the soundly sleeping back streets, and at length emerged from the city and descended into the River Road, which was slightly shorter than Grayson’s Pike which led over the high back country to The Sycamores. She knew what Nelly could do, and she settled the mare down into the fastest pace she could hold for the eleven miles before her.
Katherine was aquiver with suspense, one moment with hopeful expectation, the next with fear that her deductions were all awry. Perhaps Blake had not gone out to meet a confederate. And if he had, perhaps The Sycamores was not the rendezvous. But if her deductions were correct, who was this secret ally? Would she be able to approach them near enough to discover his identity? And would she be able to learn the exact outlines of the plot that was afoot? If so, what would it all prove to be?
Such questions and doubts galloped madly through her mind. The storm grew momently in fierceness. The water and fury of three months of withheld storms were spending themselves upon the earth in one violent outburst. The wind cracked her skirt like a whip-lash, and whined and snarled and roared among the trees. The rain drove at her in maddened sheets, found every opening in her raincoat, and soon she was as wet as though dropped in the river yonder. The night was as black as the interior of a camera, save when – as by the opening of a snapshot shutter – an instantaneous view of the valley was fixed on Katherine’s startled brain by the lightning ripping in fiery fissures down the sky. Then she saw the willows bending and whipping in the wind, saw the gnarled old sycamores wrestling with knotted muscles, saw the broad river writhing and tossing its swollen and yellow waters. Then, blackness again – and, like the closing click of this world-wide camera, there followed a world-shaking crash of thunder.
Katherine would have been terrified but for the stimulant within. She crouched low upon her horse, held a close rein, petted Nelly, talked to her and kept her going at her best – onward – onward – onward – through the covered wooden bridge that spanned Buck Creek – through the little old village of Sleepy Eye – up Red Man’s Ridge – and at last, battered, buffeted, half-drowned, she and Nelly drew up at the familiar stone gateway of The Sycamores.
She dismounted, led Nelly in and tied her among the beeches away from the drive. Then cautiously, palpitantly, she groped her way in the direction of the Blake cabin, avoiding the open lest the lightning should betray her presence. At length she came to the edge of a cleared space in which she knew the cabin stood. But she could see nothing. The cabin was just a cube of blackness imbedded in this great blackness which was the night. She peered intently for a lighted window; she listened for the lesser thunder of a waiting automobile. But she could see nothing but the dark, hear nothing but the dash of the rain, the rumble of the thunder, the lashing and shrieking of the wind.
Her heart sank. No one was here. Her guesses all were wrong.
But she crept toward the house, following the drive. Suddenly, she almost collided with a big, low object. She reached forth a hand. It fell upon the tire of an automobile. She peered forward and seemed to see another low shape. She went toward it and felt. It was a second car.
She dashed back among the trees, and thus sheltered from the revealing glare of the lightning, almost choking with excitement, she began to circle the house for signs which would locate in what room were the men within. She paused before each side and peered closely at it, but each side in turn presented only blackness, till she came to the lee of the house.
This, too, was dark for the first moment. Then in a lower window, which she knew to be the window of Blake’s den, two dull red points of light appeared – glowed – subsided – glowed again – then vanished. A minute later one reappeared, then the other; and after the slow rise and fall and rise of the glow, once more went out. She stood rigid, wondering at the phenomenon. Then suddenly she realized that within were two lighted cigars.
Bending low, she scurried across the open space and crouched beside the window. Luckily it had been opened to let some fresh air into the long-closed room. And luckily this was the lee of the house and the beat of the storm sounded less loudly here, so that their voices floated dimly out to her. This lee was also a minor blessing, for Katherine’s poor, wet, shivering body now had its first protection from the storm.
Tense, hardly breathing, with all five senses converged into hearing, she stood flattened against the wall and strained to catch their every word. One voice was plainly Blake’s. The other had a faintly familiar quality, though she could not place it. This second man had evidently come late, for their conversation was of a preliminary, beating-around-the-bush character – about the fierceness of the storm, and the additional security it lent their meeting.
Katherine searched her memory for the owner of this second voice. She had thought at first of Doctor Sherman, but this voice had not a tone in common with the young clergyman’s clear, well-modulated baritone. This was a peculiar, bland, good-natured drawl. She had not heard it often, but she had unmistakably heard it. As she ransacked her memory it grew increasingly familiar, yet still eluded her. Then, all of a sudden, she knew it, and she stood amazed.
The second voice was the voice of Blind Charlie Peck.
Katherine was well acquainted with the secret bi-partisan arrangement common in so many American cities, by which the righteous voter is deluded into believing that there are two parties contending for the privilege of giving him their best service, whereas in reality the two are one, secretly allied because as a political trust they can most economically and profitably despoil the people. Her first thought was that these ancient enemies, who for ten years had belaboured one another with such a realistic show of bitterness upon the political stage of Westville, had all along been friends and partners behind the scenes. But of this idea she was presently disillusioned.
“Well, Mr. Blake, let’s get down to business,” Blind Charlie’s voice floated out to her. “You’ve had a day to think over my proposition. Now what have you got to say to it?”
There was a brief silence. When Blake did speak, Katherine could discern in his repressed tone a keen aversion for his companion.
“My position is the same as last night. What you say is all guesswork. There is nothing in it.”
Blind Charlie’s voice was soft – purringly soft.
“Then why didn’t you ask me to go to hell, and stay at home instead of coming out here?”
There was again a short silence.
“Come now,” the soft voice persuaded, “let’s don’t go over what we did last night. I know I’m right.”
“I tell you you’re only guessing,” Blake doggedly returned. “You haven’t a scrap of proof.”
“I don’t need proof, when I’m certain about a thing,” gently returned the voice of Blind Charlie. “I’ve been in politics for forty-eight years – ever since I was nineteen, when I cast my first vote. I’ve got sharpened up considerable in that time, and while I haven’t been in on much in the last ten years, I can still smell a fat deal clean across the state. For the last three months I’ve been smelling, and smelling it keener every day, that you’ve got a rich game going.”
“And so” – rather sarcastically – “you set Bruce on, to try to run the game down!”
“Well, I would use a little different figure of speech,” returned Blind Charlie smoothly. “When I’ve got a coon up a hollow tree I build a fire in the hollow to bring him down. Bruce is my fire.”
“And you think your coon is coming down?”
“I rather think he is. Don’t you?”
“Well, I tell you he’s not! For there’s no coon up the tree!”
“I see I’ve got to state the thing to you again,” said Blind Charlie patiently, and so softly that Katherine had to strain her utmost to get his words. “When I grew sure you had a big deal on about the water-works, I saw that the only way to force you to let me in was to put you in a fix where you would either have to split up or be in danger of losing the whole thing. So I nominated Bruce. He’s one of the easiest I ever took in; but, I tell you, he is certainly one hell of a fighter! That’s what I nominated him for. You know as well as I do the way he’s swinging the voters round. It beats anything I’ve ever seen. If he keeps this up till election, and if I pull off a couple of good tricks I’ve got all ready, he’ll be a winner, sure! And now” – Blind Charlie’s purring voice thrust out its claws – “either I put Bruce in and smash your deal till it’s not worth a damn, or else you come across!”
“There’s nothing in it, I tell you!” declared Blake.
“There’s no use keeping up that pretence,” continued Blind Charlie. “You’ve had a day to think over my proposition. You know perfectly well what your choice is between: a sure thing if you divide with me, the risk of nothing if you refuse. So let’s waste no more time. Come, which is it?”
There was a long silence.
“I understand,” commented Blind Charlie, with a soft sympathy that Katherine knew was meant to bite like acid. “It’s hard for a respectable man like you to mix up with Charlie Peck. But political business makes strange bed-fellows, and unless you’re willing to sleep with almost anybody you’d better keep out of this kind of business altogether. But after all,” he added, “I guess it’s better to share a good bed than to have no bed at all.”
“What do you want?” Blake asked huskily.
“Only my share of the bed,” blandly returned Blind Charlie.
“What’s that, in plain words?”
“Not much. Only half of what you’re going to make.”
Blake exploded.
“Damn you, Peck, you’re nothing but a damned blackmailer!”
“All right, I agree to that,” said Blind Charlie. Then he added in his soft voice: “But if I’m a blackmailer in this affair, then please, Mr. Blake, what do you call yourself?”
“You – you – ” To the crouching figure outside the window Blake seemed to be half-choking. But suddenly he exploded again. “I’ll not do it, Peck! I’ll not do it – never while God’s earth stands!”
“I guess you will, Blake!” Blind Charlie’s voice was no longer soft; it had a slow, grating, crunching sound. “Damn your soul, you’ve been acting toward me with your holier-than-thou reformer’s attitude for ten years. D’you think I’m a man to swallow that quietly? D’you think I haven’t had it in for you all those ten years? Why, there hasn’t been a minute that I haven’t been looking for my chance. And at last I’ve got it! I’ve not only got a line on this water-works business, but I’ve found out all about your pretty little deal with Adamson during the last months you were Lieutenant-Governor!”
“Adamson!” ejaculated Blake.
“Yes, Adamson!” went on the harsh voice of Blind Charlie. “That hits you where you live, eh! You didn’t know I had it, did you? Well, I didn’t till to-day – but I’ve got it now all right! There, my cards are all on the table. Look ’em over. I don’t want Bruce elected any more than you do; but either you do what I say, or by God I turn over to Bruce all I know about the Adamson affair and all I know about this water-works deal! Now I give you just one minute to decide!”
Katherine breathlessly awaited the answer. A space passed. She heard Blind Charlie stand up.
“Time’s up! Good night – and to hell with you!”
“Wait! Wait!” Blake cried.
“Then you accept?”
Blake’s voice shook. “Before I answer, what do you want?”
“I’ve already told you. Half of what you get.”
“But I’m to get very little.”
“Very little!” Blind Charlie’s voice was ironical; it had dropped its tone of crushing menace. “Very little! Now I figure that you’ll get the water-works for a third, or less, of their value. That’ll give you something like half a million at the start-off, not to speak of the regular profits later on. Now as for me,” he concluded drily, “I wouldn’t call that such a very little sum that I’d kick it out of my way if I saw it lying in the road.”
“But no such sum is lying there.”
“No? Then what do you get?”
Blake did not answer.
“Come, speak out!”
Blake’s voice came with an effort.
“I’m not doing this for myself.”
“Then who for?”
Blake hesitated, then again spoke with an effort.